we are here today.’
‘You don’t expect to find him in the house, surely?’
‘No, Madame. We are investigating a pistol known to have been in his possession. This is why we wish to talk to your employer. The pistol may well have belonged to her father. We need to trace its itinerary over the past seventy-five years.’
‘Seventy-five years?’
‘Since its first registration in the early 1930s. Yes.’
‘It was registered in the 1930s?’
‘Yes. The early 1930s.’
‘Then it would have belonged to Madame la Comtesse’s husband. He is dead.’
‘I see.’ Calque could sense rather than see Macron rolling his eyes behind him. ‘Madame la Comtesse is a very elderly lady, then?’
‘Hardly, Monsieur. She was forty years younger than Monsieur le Comte when they married in the 1970s.’
‘Ah.’
‘But please. Come with me. Madame la Comtesse is expecting you.’
Calque followed Madame Mastigou towards the house, with Macron limping along behind. As they reached the front door, a hovering footman reached across and opened it.
‘This can’t be happening,’ whispered Macron. ‘This is a filmset. Or some sort of joke. People don’t live like this anymore.’
Calque pretended not to hear him. He allowed the footman to steady him up the front steps with only the lightest of touches on his uninjured arm. Secretly, he was rather grateful for the support, for he had been disguising from Macron just how fragile he really felt for fear of losing ground. Macron was a product of the bidonvilles – a street fighter – always on the lookout for weakness. Calque knew that his only real advantage lay in his brain and in the depth of his knowledge about the world and its history. Lose that edge and he was dead meat.
‘Madame la Comtesse is waiting for you in the library.’
Calque followed the footman’s outstretched arm. The secretary, or whatever she was, was already announcing them.
Here we go, he thought. Another wild goose chase. I should take the sport up professionally. At this rate, when we get back to Paris – and with Macron’s gleeful input around the office – I shall become the laughing stock of the entire 2eme arrondissement.
28
‘Look. It’s Bazena.’ Alexi was about to throw up his arm, but Sabir stopped him.
The two of them stepped back, in tandem, behind the screen separating two outside shopfronts.
‘What’s she doing?’
Alexi craned around the screen. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Believe what?’
‘She’s begging.’ He turned to Sabir. ‘I’m serious. If her father or her brother saw her, they’d take a horsewhip to her.’
‘Why? I see gypsies begging all the time.’
‘Not gypsies like Bazena. Not from families like hers. Her father is a very proud man. You wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. Even I would think twice.’ He spat on his hands superstitiously.
‘Then what’s she doing it for?’
Alexi closed his eyes. ‘Hold it. Let me think.’
Sabir darted his head around the corner of the screen and checked out the square.
Alexi grabbed him by the shirt. ‘I’ve got it! It has to be something to do with Gavril. Perhaps he’s got her looking out for us?’
‘Why doesn’t he look-out for us himself?’
‘Because he’s a lazy sonofabitch.’
‘I see. You’re not prejudiced, by any chance?’
Alexi cursed under his breath. ‘What do we do, Damo? We can’t go into the Sanctuary with Bazena there. She’ll run off and tell Gavril and he’ll blunder in and mess everything up.’
‘We’ll get Yola to talk to her.’
‘What good will that do?’
‘Yola will think of something to say. She always does.’
Alexi nodded, as if the comment seemed self-evident to him. ‘Okay then. Stay here. I will find her.’
Alexi found his cousin seated with a gaggle of her girlfriends, exactly as prearranged, outside the town hall, on the Place des Gitans. ‘Yola. We’ve got a problem.’
‘You’ve seen the eye-man?’
‘No. But nearly as bad. Gavril has staked out the church – he’s got Bazena begging near the doorway.’
‘Bazena? Begging? But her father will kill her.’
‘I know that. I already told Damo.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m not going to do anything. You are.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. You are going to talk to her. Damo says you always know what to say.’
‘He says that, does he?’
‘Yes.’
One of the other girls started to giggle.
Yola tugged at the girl’s breasts. ‘Be quite, Yeleni. I’ve got to think.’
It surprised Alexi that the girls hearkened to Yola and didn’t simply answer her back, as they customarily did to anyone her age who was still of spinstress rank. Normally, the fact that she was so late unmarried would have diminished her status in the female community – for some of these young women had already given birth, or were pregnant for the second or third time. But he had to admit that Yola had a particular air about her which commanded attention. It would certainly reflect well on him, were he to marry her.
Still. The thought of Yola keeping an eye on all his doings filled him with a prescient dread. Alexi acknowledged that he was weak-willed when it came to women. It was next to impossible for him to pass up any opportunity whatsoever to sweet-talk gadje girls. Yola was right. And that was all very well as things went. But once they were married, she was not the sort of woman to turn a blind eye to such proceedings. She’d probably castrate him while he was asleep.
‘Alexi, what are you thinking about?’
‘Me? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘Then go and tell Damo that I shall clear the way for us to go to the Sanctuary. But not to be surprised at how I do it.’
‘Okay.’ Alexi was still thinking about what it would be like to be poisoned or castrated. He didn’t know which he would prefer. Both seemed inevitable if he married Yola.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Sure. Sure I heard you.’
‘And if you see Gavril and he doesn’t see you, avoid him.’
